A lightning spark for Pompeian visitors

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A LIGHTNING SPARK

FOR

POMPEIAN VISITORS

THE GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE LIBRARY
Halsted VanderPoel Campanian Collection

A LIGHTNING SPARK

FOR

POMPEIAN VISITORS

MARY E. RAIOLA
NAPLES

THf GETTY RESEARCH
/NSriTUTE LIBRARY

PREFACE

Thia pamphlet is not intended at all to be regar-
ded as a Guide to Pompei», as this term is generally
nnderstood: and, in order to obviate to any possibU
misunderstanding between me and my reader, I wish
to state in a few words why this booklet was written
by me.

Generally the monuments of classical antiquity
are considered in a purely exterior, artistic and histo-
rical light, as though they belonged to a civilization
which has no rapport whatsoever with our own. This
is a mistake, for, given the deep and vast inheritanoo
left us by the classical civilization-for good or for ill-
in our own civilization, it is well for us to try and
penetrate beyond the mere artistic and historic exte-
rior, and to try to cull the very soul of the ancient
civilization in its most hidden essence, in order to
iudge what <loes or does not accord with our conscience.

No s[)ot in the world is better adapted than Pom-
pei for this intimate penetration of Eoman civilization,

6

for in no other place can you observe and grasj) it
so completely as you can in Ponipei. And yet the books
on Pompei which are mostly read, - though often eru-
dite enough and very interesting - present the dead
City in its purely exterior aspect and from a strictly
artistic and I.istoric point of view, not troubling to
lead the visitors beyond this cold and dead crust for
him to reach up to and grasp the antique soul in all
that it contains - be it good or ill - of real and live
matter for us.

Tills is what I have aimed at. I have aimed at
giving to those who visit Pompei some directing ideas
that may be for them a kind of lightning spark, so
that they may penetrate into the very heart of the
Eoman civilization, and look at it and consider it not
like a dead thing which may be of interest to them
but does not require a special spiritual valuation, but
like a live matter whose wide influence and echo, wi-
thout even our knowing it, affect deeply the conscience
of the modern man.

V. M.

The best way to understand Pompei

It is very easy to visit Pomi»ei, but to understuml
it is far more diflieult. You may be sure that, among
tlie hundreds of thousands who visit her yearly, but
a few ever understinid her. Surely that certain bus-
iness-man never imderstood her who came to Europe
and to Italy for the first time simply because he is
rich, and that doing so is the duty of every rich person.
Having arrived at Naples the previous <lay with one
of Cook’s or of the American Express touring parties,
he has been carried post-haste to Pompei , where he
wjis ordered to see and to understand every thing in
precisely three hours. The good man has obeyed most
punctually, looking at those things he was told by the
guide to look at, stopiMiig where the others stopped,
walking on when the others «lid so, exclaiming admi-
ringly w'hen one of his fellow-sufferers admonished
him that the propitious moment to admire had arrived.
After three hours of walking and stopping and gaping,
he went back to his hotel, truly very much pleased,
carrying in his head a w hole vocabulary of words new

8

to him, but, I contend, without having understood
Pouipei the least little bit.

Another one, being somewhat more cultured, has,
before venturing coming to Italy, studied seriously a
Manual of Roman Antiquities and a Manual of History
of Ancient Art. And then one fine day he started
for Pompei. With his Baedecker in hand, his Kodak
flung over his shoulders and his field-glass on his
breast, he roamed around for a whole day in the dead
City and has penetrated in every garden, in every
shop and in every cellar; he has observed with the
greatest care every wall, every stone, every cloud,
exclaiming at every moment: « Stupendous I Marvel-
lous I », and has gone back to Naples with a swelled
head and broken limbs, satisfied with his martyrdom,
which he offers up to Science, convinced to have got
out of Pompei all there was to know about it. Fancy
that! But 1 trow that not even he has understood
Pompei I

On the other hand, there is someone to whom
nobody would ever dare to deny the right of asseve-
ring that he has understood Pompei as .few others in
the whole world can do: this one is a Professor of
Archaeology who comes every summer to Pompei iu
order to study the Etruscan column or the triangular
Forum. And he solemnly takes up his abode at the
Albergo del Sole. Then, he spends many hours each
day in measuring, exploring, drawing, surrounded by
the mute admiration of the custodians who consider
him a kind of oracle, until, one fine day, he publishes

9

an important paper in a magazine. Who would dare to
say that he does not understjvnd Pomijei ? And yet ,
alack and alas ! I firmly believe that he has not under-
stood her! What, then must be done to understand
Pompei?

Oh! a very simple thing!

Behold: there is, at Pompei, a very humble thing,
the poorest and most humble thing in the world, known
by every one , and this thing contains exactly the se-
cret that leads to understanding Pompei , that secret
which you have been looking for uselessly in the Man-
uals and in the Guides. This poor thing is that dog,
suffocated to death, whose cast of plaster is preserved
in the Museum of Pomi>ei.

How pitiful is that poor little animal, all crippled
and convulsed in its useless attempts to break the
cruel chain that held him so tightly and inexorably!
Nothing can be more pitiful than this unconscious and
instinctive revolt against an iron fate ! Well. This
poor dog is the true key which reveals the secret of
the dead City, for he is the very symbol of that poor
city that died in the same way he did, while she was
struggling, trying to break the chain of that fate which
tied her pitilessly to death, without understanding the
reason of her very undoing.

Thus, thus, Pompei died: like unto this poor dog.
The catastrophe caught her unexpectedlj', treacherously,
without giving her time to understand what was hap-
pening. Even the most learned Plinius did not under-
stand it at first.

10

Many Pompeians died believing that the Giants
had come out of Tartarus and that the last day had
come, to again thrust down the world in the shapeless
chaos of which speak the very ancient tJosmogonies.
It was lightning-swift and monstrous a thing: the houses
were waving here and there, rocked by the earthquake,
knocking against each other; the cart in which Pli-
nius the Young was fleeing, was shaken about, on the
ground, in such a way that they were <*oinpelled to
load it with stones ; the sea drew back , leaving the
fish on dry land, panting; a terror- striking obscurity
broken only by flames and lightning, <lescended on the
city , together with a thick cloud of cinders and
lapilli ; and under all this, poor humanity was strugg-
ling, crying loudly and wildly, frienzied by an all-
deadening panic. After the third day of this hellishly
destructive work, the sun shone again, but its rays
were yellowish and pale, and looked on nothing, for
nothing was left of all the lately extant grandeur and
magnificence of the unfortunate city. «A11 was cove-
red with cinders ~ says Plinius - as with a sheet of
snow ». And, to-day the human dead of that time come
back to the light, just as that poor dog does, and we
can follow tlieii’ agony and see them <lie, as it were
under our very eyes!

In the House of the tragic I*oet two young wo-
men are hastily assembling their jewels, and are about
to flee, when they fall to the ground, suffocated,
spilling all their jewels. In the House of the Faun,
slaves and animals tiike refuge together, and together

We can fellow their agony and see them die

■ '--fSS

11

they die, falling one over the other in one heap.

In the barracks of the Gladiators two poor fel-
lows whos , e feet were fettered , died thus , without
even being able to try to flee away.

In the temple of Isis, one of the priests takes re-
fuge in the vaults, but, sensing death approaching,
he breaks first one, then a second and then a third
partition with an ax, but dies just as he was going
to gain the open.

In the Street of the Baths, a woman is fleeing
with her three children : caught by death, she falls
to the ground together with her little ones.

In the Villa of Diomedes, all the family - eigh-
teen persons - take refuge in the wine-cellar, carrying
there some food and their most precious belongings,
and barricade the door : but the a valanche of cinders
blocaded the entrance, and they died thus, walled in
alive , in the horror of dense darkness. The master of
the house , however , had fled first , taking away the
key with him and followed by a slave who was carrying
some silver vases, a lantern and a bag with about hun-
dred precious i)ieces of money, but both the master and
the slave died , suffocated , on the very threshold of
the door that opened unto the fields. What horrible
and frightful struggles against death, while the lapilli
and the cinders descended, descended, grimly, inexo-
rably !

Some there were who died serenely and who
still show in their faces the peace of slumber, like
unto that imor slave, who seems to sleep, content with

12

dying at last, and that other woman who died leaning
her head on her husband’s bosom ; but there are others
in whom intense suffering, fright and despair are vi-
vidly depicted by gnashing of teeth and the fast closing
of their fists, like unto felled giants would die.

One must think of all this; one must see it, if
Pompei is to be understood. One must not consider
her as an immense museum of interesting things, and,
may be, congratulate one’s self - without daring to utter
such a thought aloud - that Mount Vesuvius had bu-
ried her, so that we may have the pleasure of roaming
with our own feet over the pavements of an ancient
roman city.

The traveller as well as the scientist, are both -
tho’ through divers reasons - sacrilegious. We must ,
first of all, respect the colossal tragedy ; we must sense
it as a living thing, and adore its profound, immeasur-
able mystery.

Pompei is not indeed what it appears to be at
first sight, for, at first, it seems to us that it should
only interest and delight us, as we look at its paintings
and its ruins from the cool standpoint of cultured cur-
iosity.

But, if we want indeed to understand Pompei, we
must needs go deeper, under her scientific and artistic
rind, and rea(;h and touch with our heart’s thoughts
her deeper meaning , her very death and undoing.

I’ompei belongs to the realm of death. No loud
voices must be heard at Pom|>ei ; there, life must be

13

hushed, and our footsteps must be noiseless, because
the dead are every where.

There are other dead cities-let us take, for examp-
le, Ostia or Timgad - but they are vastly different
from Pompei; they have passed on by a natural,
historic-al process, dying away naturally, as by old age.
But Pompei died being struck unexpectedly, like a
young man broken oft' in the flower of his youth. At
Ostia and at Timgad, there are ruins, but no dead
people ; that is, there are no unexpectedly broken off
and crumbled away lives, all at once, outside of any
known historical process. In those two cities, one brea-
thes the atmosphere of the past, but not the sense
of violent death that permeates every thing at Pompei.
There, we may be historians, and scientists and artists
and nothing else, while here, the first requisite is a
truly human heart, and the other qualities must needs
be but secondary attributes.

This is the way to know Pompei.

II.

The very sou! of Pompei

What must we look for, first of all, at Pompei ?
To answer tourists and professors is very easy : they
must first of all look for the most characteristic houses
and the monuments most worthy of notice, where there
is most to learn and to observe. And nobody ignores
the most important monuments of Pompei: the House

14

of the Vettii^ House of Lucretius Fronto, House of the
Faun, Theatre. Laths and so on. IFs an old, well-
known, almost hackneyed story, don’t you know?

I don’t deny that this reply be reasonable, but it
is not adequate; for, behind every monument, be it
ancient or modern, there is the soul of the man and
of the nation that have createtl it , and you cannot
understand that monument if, first, yon don’t know
that soul. Therefore, the first thing that is to be done,
is to find the soul of Pompei, It is not very difficult,
if we understand each other.

If you look upon Pompei as merely an immense
exhibition of art und history, you shall never be able
to pluck the truth out of it. The deed city will appear
to you as do the statues of Aphrodite, of Apollo and
of Artemis, which are gaped at by all who approach
them in our Museums. Who remembers , who thinks
that these statues and their originals were sacred idols
of a then live religion, for sooth? that once upon a
time they stood in a temple built for them, and sil-
ently and solemnly listened to vows and to prayers ?
But now that that religion of which they were the symbols
is dead and gone, they, too, have become dead and
cold statues , which may be weighed and measured ,
but cannot be understood. It is the same with Pom-
pei, if you forget that she, too, had a soul, and if
you consider and study her monuments as dead
things.

Well, let’s begin by realizing that, in order to
grasp the soul of Pompei, we can’t start from the cons-

15

(•iolisness of our own soul, for this one is ii product
of the spirit of Clu’istendoin , aiul we see tlie world
from a V iry different standpoint from that from which
the pagans beheld it, for Christendom has reversed
the valuation of things and thoughts. And the immense
difference that exists between our own soul and the
soul of the ancients incapacitates us often to value
rightly and to judge fairly the ancient people , and ,
therefore, whoev'er wishes to become thoroughly acquaint-
ed with ancient civilization and wishes to understand
its value as well as its defects and also to realize how
much , both in good and in bad, we have inherited
from the classical culture, must, before all else, I say,
know that, however easy the interpretation of the an-
cient monuments may seem, behind them stands a
soul, which is very far indeed from our own soul.

Now, let’s try and find out what is the essential
difference betAveen the pagan and the Christian soul.

You shall certainly not expect - or perhaps wish-
me to give you here a lesson in philosophy or in hist-
ory, since I am not at all pedantic, and so, believe
me, it will be better for us to roam together in Pom-
l)ei. Come, let us penetrate together into the usual
houses known to all, and let us observe all carefully.
But let’s visit beforehand the halls of the Museum
where the objects and the furniture unearthed at Pompei
are exhibited. These halls are very necessary for the
researches to be made regarding the pagan soul, albeit
people , always attracted by the usual and best-known

16

statues -- generally barely deign to glance at them in
passing.

Here are beds, chairs, braziers, lamps, chandeliers,
mirrors, gold bracelets, cups, vases, jugs and pitchers,
and instruments of every kind. People usually marvel
at them all , and exclaim : « Look , look I every thing
just as we have them to-day I » And they are astoni-
shed at the Pompeians having had baths and looking
glasses, just as though they had been Papuasians.

But no. It is not true that all that was then was
as things are now. We must learn to look at the bot-
tom of things. The appearance may be the same, but
the substance is very different. Look, for instance, at
these old oil -lamps; what a variety of shapes 1 And
their handles! There are some in the shape of a leaf,
or of a halfmoon , or formed like a horse’ s head or
an ox’s head, or a lion’s bead, or like a ropedancer
or a Satyr or a Sphynx or a Cupid or a mask. And
these cups! at the bottom of them we see usually a
medallion representing now a flower, now a head,
sometimes a whole figure or, may be, even a group; and
the handles may be shaped as an archaic small statue,
or as a bough of leaves or as a ram’s head. And the
water-pitchers are no less remarkable ; look here ! Give
a glance to these handles ! One of them is adorned with
the head of a wild beast, another with a horse’s head,
this other one with that of a Sphynx, here a head,
there a gorgoneion. And the chandeliers ! Look
here. There are some ending with a capital, others
with the image of a beast, others again with that of

ii sphyiix^ and some others ogaiii with a kaiitharus;
this one portrays a bamboo, that one the trank of a
tree , a third one a column. What a variety 1 And
the linding of two identical objects, i.e. of two objects
that are shaped in one form , is an exceedingly rare
happening. We receive the imi>ression that all these
things have been worked out solely fi)r the joy of
creating them, and sometimes they even bear the stamp
of the joy of an artist who linds his supreme satisfac-
tion in his work. Behold, how funny, for instance, is
the figure of this corpulent Satyr, who, being tipsy,
leans on the frame of that lamp-stand 1 Or glance at
the old man on the handle of this pitcher, in the act
of thrashing that young one, who, while still receiving
his medicine, hides I don’t know what behind his back!

But it isn’t only the variety of things, as such,
that is interesting; behind this variety hides a kind
of instinct , an irresistible need of beautifying even
the simplest objects. Look at these vases ; one of them
is ornamented with six little busts of diiferent deities;
another one with two busts, the lieiid of a boar and
two cupids; a third one with a whole scene worked
out in relief. Look at these « appliques », that were
to ornate some furniture; you w.ll fin<l every thing
there: gorgoneions, Cupids, masks, iSatyrs, panthers,
lions’ heads, dogs’ and sphynxcs’ heads, victories.
Aphrodites, bats ; even the si*alc-wcights had to be
embellished: some of them are made in the shape of
an old man’s hejid, or of a woman^s head, or of the
head of a Satyr, of a goat, of Mercury; or in the

18

form of a small bottle, of a vertebra, or of an acorn.
Even the theatre-tickets had to be beautifled. Look ,
there are some in the shape of an almond, others in
that of a pigeon or of a cranium or of a fish's head,
or, for sooth, of a bag-pipe : even the very sieves
have their holes disposed in the figure of a star, or
in rays, or are disposed around, as picturing a maze!
There is a kind of aesthetic mania or fury in all this.
One would say that the Pompeian had need of seeing
beauty everywhere and in every thing, at every step
he made, even in the kitchen.

In all this, there is a psychology totally different
from ours : we , too , love the things that surround us
to be beautiful, but we limit that beauty to certain
places or certain moments ; we love to see in the parlor
a beautiful chair or a beautiful bronze, but we mind
not at all not finding beautiful pans with artistic hand-
les hanging on the wall when we enter our kitchen.
We love beauty, but we are not dominated by the
mania of it. The Pompeians were evidently happy and
comfortable only in the midst of it , while we would
end by feeling ourselves oppressed as by a kind of
obsession by the excess and uninterrupted continuity
of it.

I believe that now you will be better prepared
to listen to and understand what I am going to tell
you. Let’s go to Pompei, now, and visit the various
houses that all know so well. You'll receive the same
impression : the search for beauty dominates every-
where; everywhere paintings, foliage, architecture, arab-

The Hearcli for heaiity dominates everywhere

.

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esquesj there are walls that impress one with the
feeling of a real orgy of colour , of lines, of forms ;
and we notice very forcibly that this was not limi-
ted-as it happens in our homes -to the rooms where
the family and the guests are wont to stay, as the
atrium, the peristyle or the triclinium -oh, no! The
small bed-rooms, where the Romans used to retire only
to sleep, are often not less decorated and ornamented
than are the dining-rooms.

No 1 we are very different! Even the millionaires,
who are fond of art and own galleries of their own
which they admire and enjoy daily : even they love
to allow their eyes and brains the diversity of repose
from constant beauty, whatever may be the elegance of
their bed-rooms.

But the minute and obstinate search for beauty
never left the Pompeian. When it was not possible for
him to have it palpably, he created it Avith his ima-
gination; being obliged to live according to the customs
prevailing at Pompei, in small and ill-lighted rooms,,
he enlarged his rooms with illusive pictures, creating
in them, through the architectural lines of perspective
drawn cunningly, a back-ground of gardens and streets.
When there was no room for a garden in his property,
he planted a few plants in a rectangular spot of only
a few square meters large, and he enlarged it by paint-
ing on the walls some trees, some cows, some birds;
and, if the fountains of the garden were too small,
it didn’t faze him at all : he painted all around it a
bridge across a river, added some ducks, and he thor-

20

oughly enjoyed his beautiful imagery of a fancied
bridge, river, and so on.

The only thing that was important to him was
to have beautiful things to behold; whether these
beautiful things were true or not, didn’t matter at all.
The question which, for us, is paramount, the one of
truth or falsity, of the subjective or the objective, did
not even exist for the Pompeian.

When we see a picture, we ask first of all whether
it be an original or a copy; and, if we learn that it
is only a copy, we cease to love it, and our admir-
ation of it falls below par ; instead , the Pompeian
beheld his imaginary little garden, painted on the wall,
and he enjoyed it as tho^ it had been real.

In sooth, this deep and excessive msthetism be-
longed not only to Pompei, but to the entire Roman
civilization of the Augustean era. Those i)oets who copy
and imitate the lyrism and the tragedy and the comedy
of the Greek authors, those artists who reproduce the
Greek sculptures and the Greek paintings, those phi-
losophers who repeat the doctrines of the Greek
thinkers ; all that crow<l of people of refined art-lovers,
of dandies, of gluttons, idlers, dreamers, parasites,
give one the impression of leading an artificial life,
without thinking ever of adhering to Truth.

Here lies the difterence between the Pagan and
the Christian soul, because, in the last analysis, the
ultimate goal of our spirit is Truth, while the Romans
had not the least conception of Truth, and did not
know and never troubled about what Truth meant.

21

Filatus asked what Truth was of Him who asser-
ced to have brought Truth to the world. The same
query would have boen asked of our Lord by the
I’ompeian who eujoyed his own architecture and his
imaginary landscapes as tho’ they were real.

III.

How did the Pompeians view life?

But is this absolute need of beauty appearance
or reality ! This is the query which I advise to ask,
not only you, who visit Pompei, but all those who
wish to know thoroughly the classical civilization. Beau-
ty, as such, cannot be discussed: we feel that our own
life is, from the {esthetic point of view, exceedingly
lacking if compared to the life of a Pompeian of the
middle class. DonH you realize that? What are our
own homes , if compared to those ? When have our
homes given us the subtle {esthetic joys that emanate
from the Pompei houses! No! Beauty, as such, cannot
be discussed. But our spirit revolts against a conception
of life that goes no further than the pure aesthetical
sense, and does not put the ethical valuations above
the lesthetical ones. And now, we come face to face
with the spontaneous problem of the ethical contents
of the classical civilization, not for juding or for cond-
emning it, but to value it rightly.

If you wish to reach the bottom of the Pompeian
conscience, and see the Pompeian as he really was.

22

and not only as you may assume him to have been,
as you glance at the paintings of the House of the
Vettii, you must know the graffiti of Pompei, i. e.
those inscriptions the Pompeians used to trace on
the walls, a little everywhere.

I do not pretend that every one of you should
have gone through the large volume in folio of the
« Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum » where these graffiti
are collected, but I cannot help thinking that an
intelligent visitor to Pompei must know them. While
running through them, the Roman and the Campanian
•soul is plainly revealed with an astonishing sincerity
and we feel ourselves as transported into another
world.

There appears in them at once quite another
type of Pompeian: not the one, refined and elegant
who enjoys having the beautiful greek x>ictures of the
hellenic art reproduced on the walls of his house, and
loves to read Virgil and Catullus seated in his own
beautiful garden, listening the while to the soft mur-
murs of the small pretty modest fountain, but quite
another type which appears new to us, and which,
at first, we are at a loss to know where he sprung
from. And then, we recall having already met him
somewhere else, in a world very different from the
hellenic world; I mean to say in the atellan farces,
then in Plautus’ comedies, and again-let said with all
respect-in the inimitable ad immortal Pulcinella. If you
do not know the atellan farces, so called because
they originated in Atella, a small town near Naples,

There appejirs at-once (jiiite anotlier t.yp«? of Pompeian

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23

and if yon do not know Plautus, you shall never be
able to know the real Pompeian, the one of the graf'
fitic there he is, in that world of brazenfaced parasit-
es, of old fools, of thieving slaves, of cunning pros-
titutes , of spendthrift youths , of dishonest trades
people, that you will find the real Pompeians , those
who traced on the walls all that passed through their
head: poets’ verses, impertinences, salutations, brag-
gings, unclean sayings, all of it with an innocence or
a cynicism worthy of Rabelais or of Brantome. You
find a little of every thing on Pompei’s walls, and
much of that which you find there cannot be repeat-
ed. But even limiting us to that which can be repeat-
ed , there is still ample room for genuine astonish-
ment. One brags openly of an amorous conquest ;
another sends salutations to his beloved or to his friend;
another yet jots down some poetic verses remembered
there and then; this one curses the thieving host ;
another host writes : « when my sausage is done , if
we serve it to a customer, he, before even tasting it,
licks the saucepan ». A certain laundryman, named Cer-
don, being tipsy, covers the walls of the tavern with
hurrahs for Pompei, for the laundrymen, for Jsuce-
rians, for the whole world, and then signs his name
to it all. A piggish man soils the hosts’ bed, and excuses
himself for it with a joke in two verses; a parasite
blabs in inconsolable and burlesque verse; and a husb-
and, who has caught his Avife in flagrant adultery,
writes: «I hold her, I hold her, there is no doubt
about that. Romula is here , with that rascal ! », and

24

we eiiii'fc make out for the life of us if be jokes or
speaks seriously; and another one invokes all the tAvelve
Gods and Diana, and Jupiter ojdiinus maximus
against whomsoever should soil the wall: a custom that,
-by the way -must have been very frequent at Pom-
pei. And over all this meddley of buttbonery and vulg-
arity hovers that which has been the sickness and
the ruin of the classical world, that sensualism which
overflows every moment, and reveals incontrovertibly
the existence of a kind of inward fermentation which
never rests. « Xo one is handsome , who has not lo-
ved » says one of the graffiti, and this is really the
bottom of the essential thought of paganism.

One must love, one must enjoy ; there is nothing
else in the world. Listen to that.

You may object that these were only the populace
of Pompei, which had nothing in common with the
intelligent and cultured part of the population. Heaven!
I must confess that the middle-class Pompeian, that of
the House of the Vettii or of the House of the Faun,
appears to me to be even worse than the populace.
Are you familiar with the electoral manifestoes of
f*ompei ? You don’t know them ? They are upon my
word the most amusing thing in the world : by them
one sees and feels that the Pompeian lacked even the
shadow of honest politics. The candidates to the mdil-
ship, the same whose dining rooms we admire, used
to court the recommendatio!i of the prostitutes, and
the smallest assembly of artisans, the most miserable
corporation had its heart’s candidate.

25

The {goldsmiths Cuspiiis Paiisa, the pastry-cooks
and i>erfame-vendors Trebius; the chicken-vendors
Epidius, Siiettiiis, Elvins, the hiundrymen Gneius Se-
cundiis, the peasants Casellins, the Cartwrights Mar-
cellas, the carpenters Olconius. The poi)ulace went
with those who gave them their best-beloved games
and good bread. Cecilias Jacandas was the very by-
word and a fit representative of this class of cynical
basiness-mongers ; a scoandrel basinessman, in whose
basiness methods we are able to pry, thanks to the
waxed tablets on which he was wont to note his cont-
racts, and which were foand and are now at the Na-
ples’ Maseam. This worthy man undertook nd con-
ducted the i)ublic auction-^ales ; he advanced some
money to those who had none and could therefore not
take part in the auctions, and received from these
suckers 2 per month; thus he tempted them to
compete in. the auctions, and he again collected an-
other share on the receipts at the conclusion of the
sales.

From all this results, little by little, a kind of
peculiar contrast. The Pompeian civilization appears
to you almost divided in two different and contrasting
parts, which you are at a loss to conciliate: on one
side, an extraordinary refinement; on the other hand,
an extraordinary vulgarity. You don’t know how to
accord the helleiiistic Pompei with the Campanian
Pompei, and you understand at last that it was really
a vulgar and sensual civilization, over which the Greek
influence had spread a thick stratum of varnish.

26

But, indeed, the Roman civilization shows us the
same contrast, for there you find side by side with
the gentle nobility and smoothness of the poetry der-
ived from the hellenistic Poets, the frightful hard-
heartedness of the Gladiators’ games and of slavery and,
close to the purest enjoyment of artistic forms, Ave
find the most cynical exploitation of men and things.

The Romans, too, loved pictures and statues, but,
in those dining-rooms blessed with every beauty, the
most colossal and revolting debauchery was unfolded,
and we can well fancy that even some of those ad-
mirable tricliniums, which seem to us to be so serene
and decorously iieaceful, may have Avitnessed some of
those Roman gluttonous orgies, in Avhich hour after
hour, and seasoned and prepared in most strange fa-
shions, the rarest and most exciting and appetizing
foods, culled from all parts of the globe, passed, as
though in an epicurean review : the honey from
Tarentum, the cranes of Melos, the phaesans from Me-
dia , the hares of Spain , the kids of Ambracia , the
figs of Chalkis, the Avines of Chios, Naxos, Lesbos;
and also in these houses, Avhich look so serene, those
terrible episodes of the slavery have undoubtedly ta-
ken idace, the mere thought of which breaks the heart,
so painful it is to see man fallen down to a level be-
low that of the most savage beast, in his behavior
to another human being.

The Greek influence truly polished the Roman
sonl, but could not destroy in it^that hard and comp-
act temperament which constituted its very nature.

The most colossal and revolting (lehaiudiery was unfolded

J.:-

■.;fc

.7

And, notwithstanding its artistic appearances, Pompei
was not at all, as many i)eople assume it to have been,
an hellenistic City, but, instead, was deeply Eoman,
and, in order to understand her, we must look not
to Greece but to Eome.

Who studies the Pompeian civilization in the light
of Greek Art, makes the same error than one would
make in studying the soul of a business man in the
light of the civilization of the Eenaissance for the sole
reason that this business man may have adorned his
house with pictures of that period.

Pompei was Eoman , and its population was
identical with the population of Eome, always ready
to adore solely success and strength, and to throw
itself on the side of the victor; always the friend of
Sulla against Marius, of Csesar against Pompeius, of
Augustus against Antonius; ready to applaud equally
Caligola and Titus as long as the games be splendid
and bread abundant.

Do you really wish to know this Eoman populace?
do you ? Then go and look for it in its true realm :
the Amphitheatre. This great building, is some ways
off, and people often neglect to go there, but they are
wrong. One ought to go, sit down on a stone and think.
If you really know how to think, you will feel in the
air something that clamours for vengeance, not so
much for what may have happened right here, in the
amphitheatre of Pompei, but for the monstrous insult
to humanity of which this amphitheatre is the symbol
and the memory. Humanity, especially in ancient tim-

28

«s, was not tender towards man, for the brotherhood
of man is a Christian concept; but no nation ever
thought of amusing itself by looking at men killing
each other, or thought of constraining by force pris-
oners and slaves to kill each other for its own amu-
sement ; nor did they think of making a public spect*
acle of this blood-curdling thing, regulated and prepared
by magistrates , spending enormous sums for it , in
immense buildings, scenaries, and squandering moneys
in every wag. No, truly notl The gladiatorial games
are something which, on thinking it over, strikes one
as a monstrous nightmare, and not as some thing that
really existed, like some atrocious and unnatural crimes
that bewilder us even more than they offend us.

Sit on a step of the amphitheatre, close your eyes,
and think matters over. Here is this enormous basin,
overflowing with a half drunken crowd, perspiring,
laughing, clamouring to blood: and look at those men,
down there, in the arena, who fight against each other,
piercing and transfixing each other with sword and
trident 1 They are only poor prisoners, Sarmatians,
Tracians, Germans, Britains, captured during one
of those terrible wars of conquest that the Eomans
were wont to wage; they were taken and carried there
in that amphitheatre to fight against each other and
kill each other, solely to amuse the populace. Who
is there, among the twenty thousand persons looking
oil at the fights, yelling, laughing, singing, bantering,
who is there who feels pity for those unfortunate ones,
compelled thus to slaughter each other, perhaps being

FoKTt

Geuomk

29

compatriots and perhaps friends? Not one. Pity is na
Roman virtue. Woe to the vanquished. That’s all.
And if one of them, overpowered by fright or* by pity,
seems not to fight ferociously enough, the crowd rises
up in revolt, fills the big basin with cries, and excites
the keepers to put courage into the fainting hearts
with the red iron and the whip : « Kill , burn , whip
them ! » - « Why does that coward face the iron so
timidly ? Why does he kill with so little courage ?
Why does he die so unwillingly? » These comments,
uttered by the crowd have been preserved for us by
Seneca.

And Plinius has transmitted another piece of news,
to us: the custom to descend into the arena and to
sip the blood, while still warm, flowing from the wounds
of the gliMliators : a thing which strikes us with horror
when we behold the beast commit the same thing in
the same arena. The Romans esteemed that drinking
that blood, warm and expiring, together with the very
soul of the unhappy victims, from the wounds was
a most efficacious remedy against epilepsy, while the
human mouth wuis not tolerated to be brought in contact
even with the wuuinds of the animals.

Why does he die unwillingly? Truly, Rome had
but one pretense : that the w'orld should be disposed
to die willingly for her. It was the duty of Orient
and Occident to be disposed to give to Rome money,
statues, meals, w^omen, nay, life itself. When rich
Romans wished to amuse themselves duriug a banquet,,
they had gladiators fight before them; they revelled,.

30

and the others cut their throats; at times some blood
sprinkled on the food or on the togas, but that only
did give zest to the already keen pleasure. Romans
had still something of the vild beasts : the blood
excited them.

But those unfortunate were not always willing to
accept such an honor, for such was this horror deem-
ed to be; some of them revolted against throwing
themselves thus against unknown people or even per-
haps against compatriots or friends: then, the rebel
was forced a-head through lashing, and, in order that
no one of them should succeed in escaping by feigning
to be dead, they branded the bodies of the dead gla-
diators with a red-hot iron before carrying them away.
And it was not always possible to hope in the grace
or the pity of the people. Could it be that one should
not die willingly for Rome’s pleasure ?

But there was something still more horrible than
these very horrors : the human fight against the wild
animals.

The Romans used often this kind of amusement,
for which the crowd showed itself most greedy, and
in order, for sooth, to dispose of an excessive number
of prisoners , of those barbarians that triumph-
ant Rome dragged into slavery and of whom, every
now and then, she was gorged, as would of food a
man who had eaten to excess. Then, the prisoners
were fed to the wild beasts. Whole crowds of Britons,
Gauls, Hebrews were dragged to slaughter in this way.
Once, such an enormous number of prisoners were

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thrown to the wild animals, that these were unable to
devour so much human flesh. And not always had
those wretched prisoners the courage to do as some
twenty-nine Saxons did, who, having been thrown to
the savage beasts, throttled one another.

To-day, the amphitheatre is lonely and silent, but,
if awakened to speech by a knowing hand, it will re-
late to us the horrors of by-gone days, and you behold
with your mind’s eye, the wild beasts rushing out of
the trap -doors, roaring and pouncing upon the human
beings whom terror has petrified. And they overthrow
them., they floor them with one thrust of their huge
paws, they plunge greedily their cruel fangs in them,
they toss them here and there, they tear them to piec-
es, they scatter their mangled and bleeding members
about, and, at last, they munch and devour them,
under the very eyes of the blood -drunken crowd, of
women and of young girls, then , they prowl about,
satiated with such an orgy of human flesh, and the
wild beasts are foul with blood, and the arena is foul
with blood, and all this gore exhales a kind of mad-
ness that takes hold of you also, so that you wonder
whether you are awake or the prey of a nightmare,
and you are under the impression of having become
raving-mad.

We have now reached the bottom: further Ave can-
not go. Thought rebels at lingering any longer on these
horrors. Oh, yes ; the Komau civilization has produced
great and grand things, and we cannot conceive our
own civilization without it j but some times one is

32

prone to think that some crimes are so great, that no
other greatness can ever erase them, and then, we
ask ourselves if all the Roman inheritanse is worth
the frightful school of cold egotism that exhales from
the bottom of Roman History. There are some crimes
that make all the goodness and the beauty of life fade
away and lose its value.

To - day , the amphitheatre is mute and desert ;
but there is nothing more eloquent than those stones,
there is no spot on earth more tit than a Roman an-
phitheatre, to make us realize the enormous abyss
which separates, beyond all the artistic and historical
admirations, our own soul from the Roman soul. And
truly, here we fully understand the immense new Truth
brought to us by the Gospel.

On the corner of a Pompeian house we find a
graffito by an unknown hand; only two words, short
and terrible: «Sodoma, Gomora». Who traced these
wmrd? Perhaps a »Tew, or a despised Christian,
railed at by those proud Romans, who, notwithstanding,
saw more clearly than others to the bottom of things,
and who foresaw that, one day or the other, the wrath
of the Lord would surely fall on the city, just as the
Prophet Isaiah forewarned the sinful Jerusalem of the
divine punishment? We cannot tell, but, instinctively,
we look up to the smoking Vesuvius, and we shudder.

Howewer, immediately, more profound, more se-
rene, more just thought invades our soul : there is
no condemnation to be uttered. All sinfulness exhibi-
ted by the classical antiquity was but the logical con-

Fouti

sequence of the {esthetic and practical conception of
life, born from the innate pagan inciipacity to conceive
of life as a complex of etical viilues. '

No\v we see what profound and tragic consequences
that very {estheticism bore, which api)eared to us so
innocuous and so musing interesting , when Ave were
struck by the variety and the bejiuty of the Pompeian
furniture and houses. Beauty is indeed a gift from
God, but that soul is lost, which makes of it the goal
and aim of life itself.

But why all this? Mystery ! Paganism could be
no other thau it was, and no one may be able to say
why it Avas thus. History has her laAvs, which puny
man may not judge, and Spirit proceeds on his AA'ay,
Avhich are not ours, and vainly do we ask Avhy, why
does humanity pass ou its way right through crime.
Who AA'ould dare to sut in judgment on history ? We can
only v{due the past, not to pronounce sentences on
the dead, but only so that the living may learn.

IV.

What was the Pompeians^ faith?

Wluvt, then, have Ave yet to learn?

The deepest impression Paganism makes on those
who are considering it from the point of view of the
modern conscience is surely through amorality.

Classical civilization in general and especially the
Itoman one seems never to have had the precise con-

34

ception of what is good and what is evil, nor does it
sum to feel the least need of such a conception. If we
descend to the bottom of the Eoman soul, down to
where in our own soul the ethical values do abide,
i. e. repentance, remorse, shame, and so on, we find
nothing there. And it is this sense of moral emptiness
that makes us feel that in reality, notwithstanding
our artistic heredity, we are very far from Paganism,
as though something had cut us off from it all at
once and for ever.

How can we explain that moral emptiness?

The best place for the discussion of these matters
is the Temple of Jupiter at the Forum. Let us sit on
the steps, and, while contemplating the immense me-
lancholic opening under and before us, let us continue
our discourse.

The very fact that we are seated on the steps of
a temple turns our thoughts toward religion and sug-
gests to us a query which seems simple enough: Why
was this lack not filled by religion? This query is very
natural coming, from us. Indeed all of us are convinced
that it is impossible to build a true and real morality
outside or against religion, because only religion can
furnish us with that complex of absolute certainties
Avithout which morality remains impossible. Therefore it
appears quite natural to ask what was the function of
religion regarding the Eoman conscience.

And even here, must I beg you to try and break
this artistic and aesthetic cloud that permanently stays
between the classical civilization and ourselves, and

impedes us from getting a clear vision of it: I beg
you, that is, not to look at the Roman religion through
the beauty of her statues, the majesty of her priests
or the solemnity of her rites ; I beg of you, in other
words, to free yourselves of that traditional and con-
ventional admiration of all things Roman, which we
have inherited from the Renaissance, and which our
very culture inspires us with.

For one moment, we must free our conscience of
this unconscious, underlying culture and place it face
to face with the classical civilization as it really is.

What is, according to you, the most important thing
in Religion? Surely, it is the idea of God. It is clear
that no true and real religion can exist without a
clear and precise idea about God. How could you pray
to God, hope in God, abandon yourself to God if you
have not a complex of precise ideas about Him! Now,
it is just this very essential point that the Roman re-
ligion has never been able to give to the Romans: a
precise idea of Divinity.

Even in the most remote times the Greeks have
had very precise mythological and theological ideas
about their Deities, but the Romans instead, whose
aptitude to reflection and philosophy was utterly lacking,
had, at the beginning, not one clear idea about their
own Gods, but thought of them as abstract energies,
deprived of personality ; and only later, under the in-
fluence of the Greek mythology adopted by the Ro-
mans, did these ideas take body and shape.

The Romans had therefore no precise idea about

36

the relation between the soul and God. They knew
only that there were some Gods, they knew that it
was necessary for their own welfare to obtain the help
of those Gods, and they tried to procure this help for
themselves by following those rites pointed out by
tradition as necessary for the continuance of harmony
with their Gods and obtaining these latters- favor. But
no Eoman would have ever thought of feeling towards
any of his Gods that abandon of the heart which we
so deeply feel for God and which is our greatest assu-
rance that He will indeed help us. For the Eomans,
therefore, all religion consisted in the rites, in the
exact and precise fulfillment of their cults, as they
had been imparted to and imposed on them by trad-
ition. But you must not infer that the Eomans
were not religious. On the contrary, they thought
of themselves as being among the most religious na-
tions of the world, and indeed, there was no public
or private function in which they did not turn their
thoughts to their Deities. But this deep religiosity
suffered from the Eoman lack of understanding reli-
gion as a spiritual position, but not as merely a rite;
and of realizing that the real religion cannot consist
solely in the scrupulous fulfilment of the prescribed
rites.

And indeed, we have but to roam through the
streets of Pompei in order to receive a very lively
impression of religiosity.

No house in which there is no sacellum to the Lares
and to the Penates, and sometimes to other Deities

For the Koiuaim all relif;ion coiisiste<l in tin* rites

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37

besides these. Where this be situated does not matter.
We may find its in the peristyle, in the atrium, in
the viridarium, near to the closet, in a cnbiculum,
in a store, in the kitchen: no matter where, but it had
to be there , and not one Eoman would ever have
dreamed to have a house without its sacellum. Some-
times in the more modest abodes, instead of the sa-
cellum, there is a niche in which the images of the
Lares are kept, before which an altar is erected, to
receive the offerings ; at times this altar was movable,
so that it could be used here or there, but often it
was very rich and elegant, like unto the one found
in the House of Meleager, the ornaments of which were
wrought in silver,’ or like the one all made of marble
found in the House of Popidius is. At other times
however this movable altar was very modest, like the
one built of tuff, found in the House of the Quaestor.
And in front of these sacella garlands were hung and
lights lighted, and the morning i)rayers were recited.

Other deities were also honored in the houses;
and we have found some of those images : also,
for instance, this archaistic Artemis, which is to-day
in the Naples Museum, was discovered in the domestic
sacellum of one of those houses. And on the outside
walls of the houses, as is witness the Street of Abun-
dance, were often painted images of divers deities:
the 12 gods, Juppiter, Minerva, Venus, Mercury, Bac-
chus, Hercules. And every now and then, in the streets,
one met with altars and oratories voted to the gods,
often placed near the public fountains, where, between

38

one and the other job, the people of the streets stop-
ped a moment and recited a prayer. The Eomans
were, then, religious, yes, certainly.

From this false conception issued a fanatic and
fearing ritualism which was ever afraid of committing
some errors during the sacrifices, so much so that,
before celebrating some solemn sacrifice, they used to
celebrate another one, so as to expiate in anticipation
any error they may commit in the following one, and
so much so also that the prayers of the rites were
not spoken spontaneously nor recited by heart but
were read aloud by a priest and repeated word for
word by the people, so as to be sure that not even
a syllable was changed, and so much so again , that
for centuries and centuries priesthoods, ceremonies
and very ancient prayers that were not any more un-
derstood by anybody, were maintained in use.

The weakness of the Eoman religion obtained here,
in this identification of religion and ritualism, which
is the death of any conscious, religious faith, because
from it no ethical values can ever emerge. Now you
will understand why amoralism and religiosity, which
are for us irreconciliable terms, could very well be re-
conciled in the roman conscience, and you will under-
stand the reason of this strange fact, that notwith-
standing the small tabernacles and the altars and the
images spread all over, the graffiti, — which are the
most sincere expression of the pompeian soul —
donH contain the slightest religious expression. The
Pompeian has expressed in the graffiti every vice and

WKlClIAliDT

The llomaus were religious, yes, certaiuly

39

every virtue, but bas not said one word that may in-
dicate a religious feeling.

And now, seated on the steps of the Temple of
Juppiter, the supreme god of the Korn ans, while my glance
scans the ruins of the glory that is i)ast, I strive to
think what ideas may have suggested this kind of
religion to the Pompeians at the moment of the cata-
strophe; and I can’t comprehend what comfort may
have come to them from all these sacrifices, from all
these prayers, from all these offerings made with so
much precision and so much sincerity during so many
years, because I know that behind all this ritualism,*
there" never was the idea of a God into whose hands
man can abandon himself with all trust in the moment
of distress. And it seems to me that, at the moment
of death, the Pompeians must have felt a great lack
of comfort and of warmth around the heart.

V.

How did the Pompeians consider death?

Now I beg you to come out through the Hercu-
laneum Gate, and sit there again, thinking. On the
right and on the left of the great desert avenue
tombs stand erect. Every now and then a cypress sends
to heaven a funereal note. Have you ever asked your-
self why , oh , why did the Eomans bury their dead
outside the gates, and on the roadside! At Rome, ba-

40

rely outside of every gate, real and immense avenues
of sepulclires were stretcliing. Why ?

You certainly know that, in the ancient times,
the Eoman used to bury their dead in the houses
near the hearth. The XII Tables forbad this barbar-
ous custom to be followed any longer, ordering that
no body should henceforth be buried in the city; and
from that time dates the custom to bury the dead just
outside the gates, the nearest possible to the living.
Indeed the first Eomans had no clear conception of
what death is. In the prehistoric age, as many of
the other primitive peoples, they could not realize that
death should modificate life very deeply and they be-
lieved that the dead continued to live in intimacy with
their family. It is from this conception that the deep
and sincere cult of the dead sprang up, which carac-
terizes the Eomans, and that constitutes that featui'c
of his religious consciousness which is the most sincere
and full of feeling, and of which so many sepulchral
epigraphs do testify. The funeral rites give a striking
evidence of this cult for the dead. Nothing, for in-
stance, can be more touching than the Parentalia,
when, for three full days, all the city was pervaded,
by a funereal breath, when business was stopped, mar-
riages could not take i^lace, and all the temples were
closed; while the whole population went to make offer-
ings to their dead and to honor their tombs. And it
is strange to observe how, much later, the very ancient
conception persisted that the dead, in some unexplained
way, adhered to his tombs: and the custom to gather

Fisciiktti

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41

every now and then around the dead one, almost so
as to tighten the bonds which tied him to tlie living.
Very often, the tombs’ very construction show how
deeply this concept was rooted in them.

Look, for instance, on the tomb of M. Cerinnus
Itestitutus: it is a small edifice with the urn buried
in it under the altar, and near it is a seat on which
the living came to sit down. See, following this tomb,
that of Auliis Veins: it is built in a semi-circular
shape and on this tomb also the living came to sit.
Look at the tomb of Cneius Vibrius Saturninus: it is
altogether like to a triclinium, on which the living
came to sit down for the funereal banquets at which
the dead one ideally took part.

For us, grown up under the influence of the Christian
spirituality, it is hard to fancy such a connection with
the dead. We believe that they are near unto us in
spirit, and we honor their tombs, but we don’t believe
that, by standing near that tomb, we are nearer to
the departed, and neither do we believe that he is
concretely present to our lives. We know very well
that, however sacred our dead may be for us, and
however much we feel sure of their presence, they
are not with us, nor are they within the tomb, but
that they are somewhere else, altho’ we ignore both
where and how they were, exalted in the after life
where their self is perpetuated.

And it is just this that the Eomans lacked: they
had a very deep cult for the dead, they knew that
the departed one was an energy that continued to act

42

after death, but they could not say what this energy
really was, or where it was. In this as well as in all
the rest of their religion, the Eomans proved them-
selves utterly incapable to think mythically and phi-
losophically, and never they were able to conceive a
real and true life beyond this world. In reality, the
Romans did honor the dead, not because death had
' sanctified or purified them, but because they thought
that the dead were an energy which it was well for
them to conciliate and into whose good graces they
wished to be: but they did not understand death.

What must then so many of those intelligent and
cultured Pompeians have thought when they beheld
the abyss of death gaping before their faces f In tbe
mouth of these epicurians, crushed in the fullness of
their joy, we cannot imagine but some of those terrible
protests which some of the Roman sepulcral epitaphs
have preserved for us: that one, for instance, which
says : « To the wicked Gods, who have ravished thy
innocent soul » ; or that other terrible one: «I lift my
hand against the God who cut me off, me, innocent. »

Or, if not absolute revolt, at least an acute re-
gret, a great sorrow for having had to leave, without
any apparent reason, so many thing beautiful and
dear, the lovely peristyles, so cool and quiet, and the
beautiful rooms , the stately mansions , full of bron-
zes, marbles, paintings. The Romans were essentially
epicurean by temperament more than by reflection:
their pratical mentality was adverse to any speculation;
they did not know how to go beyond the empirical

They <li(l net undershind death

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43

life; death was for them the end of every tiling, the
eternal unconscious sleep, the loss of every conscious
sense, the great nothing. One funereal epigraph tells
us : It After death there is nothing , and this , which
thou seest, is Man I » And another one : « Thou who
readest , live a joyful life , oh my friend , for after
death there will be neither laughter nor fun, nor any
pleasure » ; and another one again : « Eat, drink, have
a good time, and come to me. » From such sentiments
nothing can come but an unbridled dissolute, having
only a great desire to live, and an acute regret that
he should have to die and to renounce every joy known
to him; sentiments which are typically roman, both
of them. In the light of these concepts, the orgy of
beauty to which the Pompeian abandoned himself has
a deeper and sadder significance: the ultra aesthetic
sense and the sensualism appear as the natural out-
come of those who exploit life to the utmost because
he thinks that , after death , there is nothing else :
« Live a life of pleasure, my friend, for, after death,
there will be neither laughter nor fun. »

We must not think, however, that this epicurean
concept of death should have always derived from
spiritual meanness; oh, no 1 This is so untrue, that the
sepulcral epigraphs give ample proof that other and
much more elevated concepts were current at Rome; but
these were the product of foreign philosophical currents
and were never very widely spread. The Roman was
rather dull of comprehension. Philosophical impotency
chained, so to speak, the Pompeian to the material

44

life, and prevented him from imagining with precision
whatever there was life beyond this terrestrial one.
His epicurianism derived therefore from the fact that,
from his point of view, all that was worth anything
was only our earthly life; all the rest might be there
or not, but it had no intrinsic value.

The Eomans lacked, therefore, that which was
the great consolation of the Greek mysticism and
that which is, to-day, the great comfort of the
Christian : the certainty that , after death , there
exists another and better life, and which contains
retribution and punishment, and in which our own life
flows into, and resolves itself. Now, what is it that
reconciles us to the sorrows and the injustices of life,
if not just the idea that these are transient and ap-
parent, but, in the end they must needs cede the way
to another life less sorrowful and more just? For the
Eomans, in truth, death only sanctions error and wrong,
rendering them irreparable: after our death, there is
nothing else, and at the point of death all we suffer
injnstly presents itself to us as a fatality, which we
must, perforce submit to. And here the other feature
of Eoman conscience evolves itself, i. e. the stoicism,
or the willed and forced indiflPerence towards all that
life brings us, be it ill or good, awaiting death to
close the drama of our existence. Thence comes the
piety the Eomans ever showed for their dead , and
which appears to our conscience to be sorrowfully ste-
rile. What is the use to decorate the tomb with flowers
and- to offer gifts and sacrifices to the departed and

45

even to celebrate on his tomb, together with him, the
1‘unereal meal if, in the last analysis, we know nothing
of him, we ignore whether he is happy or unhappy,
if he enjoys the reward of his good deeds and of his
sufferings, if indeed he has a conscience, a will, a life?
The cult of the departed , when not accompanied by
faith in the immortality of the soul, is sterile and
empty, not less so that the animism of the primitive
peoples.

But certainly not all Pompeians shall have
remained satisfied with the ancient Roman cult
many of them — as was the case in Rome — must
have been inclined to accept the faith in the after
life which greek mysticism had brought to Rome
very early. These concepts were a faith sometimes
grossly material , and gave of the after - life an
excessively earthly concept, but at least, they af-
firmed that which is necessary for man to believe, that
is, that life does not end with death and that there
is a reward or a punishment after life be ended. The
reward was certainly trivial in our eyes for it consi-
sted of an intensified en joyment of all those joys which
make the delight of men on earth, and the punishment
was certainly grottesque, for they consisted in stupid
and material torments.

Certiiiuly our conscience cannot believe as the
Orphic did, that the persons who had been good ai'e
sent, after death, to inhabit a most beautiful spot,
full of sunshine and of joy, where they pass their time
in bauquetting, playing instruments and conversing.

46

and even less can we believe that those who have
done wrong should be punished and tormented in the
great beyond, as the Orphic believed that Tantalus,
Sisyphus and the Danaids were tormented. But at least,
they propounded assurance, and man needs this as-
surance. And the immense importance that these con-
cepts have had for humanity’ s history, is demonstrated
by the fact that, indeed, they have remained true in
Christendom.

Greek mysticism, and especially Orphism, gave
then to the Eomans that which these lacked: a moral
assurance. Under the Orphic influence the Eoman
learned to believe; after having for centuries concen-
trated all his interest on this life he was learning now
to turn his thought to the after-life.

There is perhaps not, in the whole religious hi-
story of the world, another so deep upheaval, except
the Christian revolution. And the proof that it answer-
ed a profound need of the spirit is to be seen in
the diffusion that the Greek mysticism brought to Eome
in the late Eepublican age, culminating with Virgil,
and determining a real mystical revival.

From this revival derives the presence of the
Orphism at Pompei, in the Villa of Mysteries.

Through one of those coincidences Avhich take on
the importance of a symbol, the Villa of Mysteries is
situated just at the end of the Street of Tombs. It is
we go there at last, after having steeped one’sself
in the fullness of the Pompeian life, after having tas-
ted almost far enough to be gorged with the msthetism

47

of the Pompeian life. Oh, how far they seem to be
now, the gorgeous tricliniums, the luxurious cubiculi,
and how far seems now paganism, in the remote orphic
Basilica !

The laughter which we hear coming as a far-olf
echo from the tricliniums that still remember the
debauchery of times long past, and the echo of the
loud moans coming from the Amphitheatre, that still
remembers also the massacres held there, both of these
are waning because they seem to belong to a far-
off past.

We seem to find ourselves in a new world, where
the chief aim of life is no longer the enjoyment of
the senses but the purification of the soul, and where
man takes with him in the tomb, not only what he
has eaten and imbibed, but also what he has believed
and hoped, and where he is not dominated by the
consciousness of his own strength, but by just the re-
verse, I mean to say by the knowledge of his own
inferiority. We feel ourselves, indeed, in a Christian
atmosphere, we feel at home.

The Villa of Mysteries reconciles us with Pompei,
because it fills up the chasm that separated us from
it, and that, from behind the distasteful artistic Pompei
which we admire without being able to esteem it, it
shows us quite another Pompei, the mystic Pompei,
which we can esteem and love, because, although with
great diversity of language, it still expresses our very
own sorrow. Singular and unknown Pompei, a Pompei
that was Christian even before Jesus, that believed

4^

ia eternal life, believed in recompense and i)unisbmeMt
in after-life, believed in a God, dead and resuscitated,
in Whom and through Whom man is born again and
is redeemed from sin. How far is now, that old tra-
ditional Pompei, which we had been taught to admire !
How false and distasteful it appears now to us,
with its dancing Fauns, with its Cupids, with its
tricliniums 1

What is now all this stuff, Avorthy only. of Ma-
nuals and of picture-cards, compared to the immense
drama of the orphie- lithurgy, to the gradual transfor-
mation of a human being into a being divine, athAvart
death and resurrection! What must we think of our
vaunted aesthetism, which causes us to go into raptures
before an old lamp, if Ave confront it AA’ith the terrible
admonishment that emanates from the liturgy :
Suffer in order to enjoy; die in order to resuscitate.
Per aspera astra. Is not this, then , exactly what
life has taught us? And Avas this not worth many
Fauns and many Cupids ? Oh, yes, there Avas, in
antiquity a soul akin to our own, and tormented
by almost the same problems, but it lies hidden, and
Ave must learn how to go and look for it.

And so, in the end, after having so much admired
and so much reflected, we seem to see opening before
us, something like a revelation, the treasure of the
ancient civilization. And, in the last analysis, we iin-
dershind a very simple truth : that the traditional vi-
sion of classical antiquity gives us only a superficial
and inadequate idea of it, bewitched as it was by the

How far is now that old traditional Pompei !

49

so-called aesthetic values, forgetting or ignoring the
moral values, which are less frequent and more or less
easily to be overtaken but all the more precious for
us because in them , and not in the msthetism or in
the sensualism, do we detect a part of our own selves.

Pompei a dead city ! Yes, most assuredly the tri-
cliniums are dead. We can admire and sutdy them
objectively, like we do the animals of a i)aletuological
museum, without our heart being with them. Hut
there was something at Pomi)ei that still remained
alive, because it constitutes a link in the eternal
chain of Spirit; something which lives and palpitates
here in our very heart, and strengthens us for the way
we have yet to wander over; and this some thing
is alive.

Not because the archaeologists have called it to
light again , but because it is , in reality, but an
antique page of what Jesus has taught to the world:
suffer, in order to redeem thyself.

Tip. Fratelli Cioi.fi - Napoli (132)

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